A Comparative Study of North American and Indian Third-Party Logistics (3PL) Service Providers

This paper makes a comparison between the North American and Indian third-party logistics (3PL) industries in terms of demographics, key success factors and performance metrics. One of the important observations of the paper is that although breadth of service offerings, investment in information systems, availability of skilled manpower and integration of supply chains are identified as significant predictor variables for performance metrics, there are wide gaps between Indian 3PL firms' expectations and achievements with respect to these variables. It is expected that the findings of the paper would provide valuable managerial insights into the Indian 3PL industry and help logistics managers make better, informed decisions concerning the allocation of scarce resources.